Marco Polo

Marco Polo, (born c. 1254, Venice [Italy]—died January 8, 1324, Venice), Venetian merchant and adventurer, who traveled from Europe to Asia in 1271–95, remaining in China for 17 of those years, and whose Il milione (“The Million”), known in English as the Travels of Marco Polo, is a classic of travel literature.

Travels of the Polo family

Polo’s way was paved by the pioneering efforts of his ancestors, especially his father, Niccolò, and his uncle, Maffeo. The family had traded with the Middle East for a long time, acquiring considerable wealth and prestige. Although it is uncertain if the Polos were of the nobility, the matter was of little importance in Venice, a city of republican and mercantile traditions.

The family appears to have been shrewd, alert, and courageous; about 1260 they foresaw a political change in Constantinople (e.g., the overthrow of the Crusaders who had ruled since 1204 by Michael VIII Palaeologus in 1261), liquidated their property there, invested their capital in jewels, and set off for the Volga River, where Berke Khan, sovereign of the western territories in the Mongol Empire, held court at Sarai or Bulgar. The Polos apparently managed their affairs well at Berke’s court, where they doubled their assets. When political events prevented their return to Venice, they traveled eastward to Bukhara (Bokhara) and ended their journey in 1265, probably at the grand khan’s summer residence, Shangdu (immortalized as Xanadu by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge). Establishing friendly relations with the great Kublai Khan, they eventually returned to Europe as his ambassadors, carrying letters asking the pope to send Kublai 100 intelligent men “acquainted with the Seven Arts”; they also bore gifts and were asked to bring back oil from the lamp burning at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Polo’s journey to Asia

Little is known about Marco’s early years except that he probably grew up in Venice. He was age 15 or 16 when his father and uncle returned to meet him and learned that the pope, Clement IV, had recently died. Niccolò and Maffeo remained in Venice anticipating the election of a new pope, but in 1271, after two years of waiting, they departed with Marco for the Mongol court. In Acre (now ʿAkko, Israel) the papal legate, Teobaldo of Piacenza, gave them letters for the Mongol emperor. The Polos had been on the road for only a few days when they heard that their friend Teobaldo had been elected pope as Gregory X. Returning to Acre, they were given proper credentials, and two friars were assigned to accompany them, though they abandoned the Polos shortly after the expedition resumed.

Polo, MarcoMarco Polo's travels to Asia (1271–95), immortalized in his Travels of Marco Polo. Marco, his father, and his uncle set out from Venice in 1271 and reached China in 1275. The Polos spent a total of 17 years in China. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

From Acre the travelers proceeded to Ayas (“Laiazzo” in Marco’s writings, now Yumurtalik, on the Gulf of İskenderun, also called the Gulf of Alexandretta, in southeastern Turkey). During the early part of 1272, they probably passed through Erzurum, in what is now eastern Turkey, and Tabrīz, in what is now northern Iran, later crossing inhospitable deserts infested with brigands before reaching Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. There the Polos decided not to risk a sea passage to India and beyond but to proceed overland to the Mongol capital.

They next traveled through deserts of “surpassing aridity” toward the Khorasan region in what is now eastern Iran. Turning gradually to the northeast, they reached more hospitable lands; Badakhshān (“Balascian”), in Afghanistan, in particular, pleased the travelers. Marco suggests that they remained there for a year; detained, perhaps, by illness (possibly malaria) that was cured by the benign climate of the district. It is also believed that Marco visited territories to the south (other parts of Afghanistan, Kafiristan in the Hindu Kush, Chitral in what is now Pakistan, and perhaps Kashmir) during this period. It is, however, difficult to establish which districts he traversed and which he may have described from information gathered en route.

Leaving Badakhshān, the Polos proceeded toward the Pamirs, but the route they followed to cross these Central Asian highlands remains uncertain. Descending on the northeastern side of the chain, they reached Kashi (“Cascar”) in what is now the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China. By this point the Polos were on the main Silk Road, and they probably followed along the oases to the south and east of the Takla Makan Desert—Yarkant (“Yarcan”), Hotan (“Cotan”), Che’erchen (“Ciarcian”), and Lop Nur (Lop Lake). These stepping-stones led to Shazhou (“Saciu”) on the borders of China, a place now called Dunhuang.

Polo, MarcoMarco Polo traveling in a caravan, illustration from the Catalan Atlas (1375), in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France.Fine Art Images/age fotostock

Before reaching Shazhou, the Polos had traveled primarily among Muslim peoples, though they also encountered Nestorian Christians, Buddhists, Manichaeans, and Zoroastrians. In the vast province of Gansu (called “Tangut” by Marco), an entirely different civilization—mainly Buddhist in religion but partly Chinese in culture—prevailed. The travelers probably stopped in Suzhou (“Sukchu”; now Jiuquan) and Ganzhou (“Campiciu”; now Zhangye) before entering the Ningxia area. It is not clear whether they reached the Mongol summer capital of Shangdu (“Ciandu”) directly or after a detour; in any event, sometime in 1275 (1274, according to the research of Japanese scholar Matsuo Otagi) the Polos were again at the Mongol court, presenting the sacred oil from Jerusalem and the papal letters to their patron, Kublai Khan.

Sojourn in China

For the next 16 or 17 years the Polos lived in the emperor’s dominions, which included, among other places, Cathay (now North China) and Mangi, or “Manzi” (now South China). They may have moved with the court from Shangdu, to the winter residence, Dadu, or “Taidu” (modern Beijing).

Unfortunately, because Marco’s book Il milione is only incidentally a biography and autobiography, it is exceedingly difficult to ascertain where the Polos went and what they did during these years. Nevertheless, it is well known that many foreigners were in the employ of the state, since the Mongol rulers did not trust their Chinese subjects; so it would have been natural for the Polos to fit in most honourably and successfully with this motley society.

The extent of their success and the specific roles they filled, however, remains an open question. The elder Polos were probably employed in some technical capacity. Once and very abruptly, a glimpse in Il milione is obtained of them acting as military advisers during the siege of “Saianfu” (formerly Xiangyang, now Xiangfan), a city that was finally taken, according to Marco, thanks to some “great mangonels” (missile-throwing engines) built according to the Polos’ specifications. The whole episode is dubious, however.

Marco was about age 20 when he reached Cathay. Although he knew little or no Chinese, he did speak some of the many languages then used in East Asia—most probably Turkish (in its Coman dialect) as spoken among the Mongols, Arabized Persian, Uighur (Uygur), and perhaps Mongol. He was noticed very favourably by Kublai, who took great delight in hearing of strange countries and repeatedly sent him on fact-finding missions to distant parts of the empire. One such journey took Polo to Yunnan in southwestern China and perhaps as far as Tagaung in Myanmar (Burma); on another occasion he visited southeastern China, later enthusiastically describing the city of “Quinsay” (now Hangzhou) and the populous regions recently conquered by the Mongols. Apart from the missions he undertook for the emperor, Polo may have held other administrative responsibilities, including inspection of the customs duties and revenues collected from the trade in salt and other commodities. According to some versions of Il milione, he governed the city of Yangzhou for three years sometime between 1282 and 1287; but this assertion seems hardly credible and hinges entirely on the interpretation of one word. There is, however, ample evidence to show that Polo considered himself an adoptive son of his new country.

The return to Venice

Sometime around 1292 (1290 according to Otagi), a Mongol princess was to be sent to Persia to become the consort of Arghun Khan, and the Polos offered to accompany her. Marco wrote that Kublai had been unwilling to let them go but finally granted permission. They were eager to leave, in part, because Kublai was nearly 80, and his death (and the consequent change in regime) might have been dangerous for a small group of isolated foreigners. Naturally, they also longed to see their native Venice and their families again.

The princess, with some 600 courtiers and sailors, and the Polos boarded 14 ships, which left the port of Quanzhou (“Zaiton”) and sailed southward. The fleet stopped briefly at Champa (“Ciamba,” modern Vietnam) as well as a number of islands and the Malay Peninsula before settling for five months on the island of Sumatra (“Lesser Giaua”) to avoid monsoon storms. There Polo was much impressed by the fact that the North Star appeared to have dipped below the horizon. The fleet then passed near the Nicobar Islands (“Necuveran”), touched land again in Sri Lanka, or Ceylon (“Seilan”), followed the west coast of India and the southern reaches of Persia, and finally anchored at Hormuz. The expedition then proceeded to Khorāsān, handing over the princess not to Arghun, who had died, but to his son Maḥmūd Ghāzān.

The Polos eventually departed for Europe, but their movements at this point are unclear; possibly they stayed for a few months in Tabrīz. Unfortunately, as soon as they left the Mongol dominions and set foot in a Christian country, at Trebizond in what is now Turkey, they were robbed of most of their hard-won earnings. After further delays, they reached Constantinople and finally Venice (1295). The story of their dramatic recognition by relatives and neighbours who had thought them long since dead is a part of Polo lore that is well known.

Soon after his return to Venice, Polo was taken prisoner by the Genoese—great rivals of the Venetians at sea—during a skirmish or battle in the Mediterranean. He was then imprisoned in Genoa, where he had a felicitous encounter with a prisoner from Pisa, Rustichello (or Rusticiano), a fairly well-known writer of romances and a specialist in chivalry and its lore, then a fashionable subject. Polo may have intended to write about his 25 years in Asia but possibly did not feel sufficiently comfortable in either Venetian or Franco-Italian; however, with Rustichello at hand, the traveler began dictating his tale. The language employed was Franco-Italian—a strange composite tongue fashionable during the 13th and 14th centuries.

Polo was soon freed and returned to Venice. The remainder of his life can be reconstructed, in part, through the testimony of legal documents. He seems to have led a quiet existence, managing a not too conspicuous fortune and dying at age 70. His will set free a “Tatar slave” who may possibly have followed him from East Asia. A famous story relates how Polo was asked on his deathbed to retract the “fables” he had invented in his book; his answer was that he told barely half of what he actually saw.

Nature and content of Il milione

An instant success—“In a few months it spread throughout Italy,” wrote Giovanni Battista Ramusio, the 16th-century Italian geographer—Il milione was apparently conceived as a vast cosmography based on firsthand experience. The book was not intended to be a collection of personal recollections, which leaves Polo’s own personality somewhat elusive, but Divisament dou monde (“Description of the World”), as it was originally titled, was to be the book to end all books on Asia. Nonetheless, details concerning travel, distances covered, and seasons are rarely stated; the panorama is observed from an impersonal distance with a powerful wide-angle lens. In Il milione Polo often branches off into descriptions of places probably visited not by himself but by his relatives or people he knew. Typical digressions are those on Mesopotamia, the Assassins and their castles, Samarkand, Siberia, Japan, India, Ethiopia, and Madagascar. Il milione is better understood not as biography but as part of the vernacular didactic literature, of which the Middle Ages offer many examples.

Frontispiece depicting Marco Polo, from an early printed edition (in German) of his travels.Courtesy of the Columbia University Libraries, New York

The work is marked by uncertainty and controversy, however. The origin of the popular title, Il milione, for example, is not quite clear. Although it most likely comes from Polo’s nickname, Il Milione, from his tendency to describe the millions of things he saw in the Mongol empire, it may have been related to the idea of a “tall story,” or from a nickname running in the family, possibly traceable to a corruption of Aemilione (“Big Emil”). The history of the text itself is characterized by similar uncertainty. There is no authentic original manuscript, and even if there were, it would likely not represent what Polo dictated since Rustichello asserted his own personality and familiar phraseology, especially in the standardized description of battles. Polo also seems to have made emendations himself on various copies of the work during the last 20 years or so of his life. Some editors—for instance, the friar Pipino, who made a good Latin translation of the original—found many of Polo’s descriptions or interpretations impious or dangerously near to heresy and therefore heavily bowdlerized the text. Furthermore, since all this happened long before the invention of printing, professional scribes or amateurs made dozens of copies of the book, as well as free translations and adaptations—often adding to or subtracting from the text with little or no respect for authenticity. There were many unfamiliar names that rarely passed unchanged from one copy to another. Consequently, there are some 140 different manuscript versions of the text in three manuscript groups, in a dozen different languages and dialects—an immensely complex and controversial body of material representing one of the most obdurate philological problems inherited from the Middle Ages.

Subsequent reputation

As a result of Polo’s reticence concerning personal matters and the controversies surrounding the text, Polo’s reputation has suffered dramatic ups and downs. For some scholars, novelists, filmmakers, and dramatists, he was a brilliant young courtier, a man of prodigious memory, a most conscientious observer, and a successful official at the cosmopolitan court of the Mongol rulers. For others he was a braggart, a drifter ready to believe the gossip of ports and bazaars, a man with little culture, scant imagination, and a total lack of humour. Still others argue that he never went to China at all, noting that he failed, among other things, to mention the Great Wall of China, the use of tea, and the ideographic script of the Far East, and that contemporary Chinese records show no trace of Polo. (But under what name was he known? Who would recognize the 16th- and 17th-century Italian missionary Matteo Ricci under Li Matou or the 18th-century painter Giuseppe Castiglione under Lang Shining?)

A more balanced view must take into account many factors, especially the textual problem and medieval ideas of the world. Modern scholarship and research have, however, given a new depth and scope to his work. It is generally recognized that he reported faithfully what he saw and heard, but that much of what he heard was fabulous or distorted. In any case, Polo’s account opened new vistas to the European mind, and as Western horizons expanded, Polo’s influence grew as well. His description of Japan set a definite goal for Christopher Columbus in his journey in 1492, while his detailed localizations of spices encouraged Western merchants to seek out these areas and break the age-old Arab trading monopoly. The wealth of new geographic information recorded by Polo was widely used in the late 15th and the 16th centuries, during the age of the great European voyages of discovery and conquest.